Note: Mary Beth Doyle, environmental health campaigns director at the Ecology Center in Ann Arbor, passed away Saturday. Her friends are
creating a Memorial Fund in Mary Beth's honor to continue her work.
Contributions can be sent to: The Ecology Center, c/o the Mary Beth Doyle
Memorial Fund, 117 N. Division, Ann Arbor, MI 48104.
UPDATE: Mary Beth's accomplishments fill a page. Her Ann Arbor News obituary is here:
http://www.legacy.com/annarbor/LegacySubPage2.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonId=2820913
Mary Beth: Advocate and Friend
It’s been more than two days now since the call came saying that Mary Beth had lost her life in a car accident. It will take more than two years to accept that this really happened, that we’ve lost one of Michigan’s most formidable and effective environmental advocates, and what’s more, a dear friend beloved by many.
The word “unruly” has an unfortunately negative connotation in the minds of some, but in the case of Mary Beth, it is an emphatic word of praise. Mary Beth was unruly in the sense that she could not be ruled – not by government indifference, not by corporate propaganda, and most of all not by the answer “no.” She never accepted “no” in her quest for a more just, more humane and environmentally healthy society.
She was unfaltering in her conviction that the individual can make a difference. Her work is proof of her belief. She helped shut down Michigan’s polluting medical waste incinerators. She did some of the most effective initial organizing and educating that led to the enactment of laws limiting out-of-state trash and promoting recycling. She was a key strategist in the effort to protect women of child-bearing age from poisons in fish when the State of Michigan tried to do away with science-based advisories. She was in the midst of a monumental new effort to enlist Michigan pediatricians in the effort to protect our most vulnerable from pollution.
Her empathy was always with the individual citizen, or small group of citizens, fighting against the odds to stop environmental health damage or to promote an environmentally sound alternative. She was the most ethical advocate I’ve ever known.
Each friend of Mary Beth’s will harbor private memories of the gifts she left us. I’ll always remember her quick, hearty laugh; her generosity with time and empathy; and the unfaltering way in which she cultivated and nurtured our friendship.
At the Ecology Center and in Ann Arbor as a whole, she found a family of people with shared commitment and made a warm home. It’s fitting that her work will be carried on in her name there by her closest friends, and by future generations of determined, undaunted, and charismatic advocates like her.
But we will always miss Mary Beth.